[csw-maintainers] Packages with private /opt/csw/foo directory

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski
<maciej at opencsw.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
>> well,, there are multiple potential "issues" at play here.
>> on the one hand, I understand your frustration at not having it
>> normally in the path.
>> But what would be the side effects of having a symlink
>> /opt/csw/bin/mysql -> /opt/csw/mysql5/bin/mysql ?
>
> I was thinking about this... what if someone has mysql4 also
> installed?

I would like to rant a bit more about the nonstandard prefix.  Yes,
one might want to have both mysql4 and mysql5 installed. I don't know
about mysql4, but the mysql5 package currently installs following
symlinks:

/opt/csw/lib/mysql --> ../mysql5/lib/mysql
/opt/csw/include/mysql --> ../mysql5/include/mysql

If mysql4 does the same, the two packages can't peacefully coexist. If
mysql4 does not install the /opt/csw/lib/mysql symlink, why has mysql5
to?

My way of thinking would be: There should be one canonical MySQL
version for OpenCSW, which is being installed in /opt/csw. If there
are other versions, say, legacy versions, they can be installed in
different prefixes, but they are not allowed to install anything that
conflicts with the canonical package.

Having said that, I am going to continue to use /opt/csw/mysql5 for
the mysql5 package.

> Perhaps some sort of "switch" app, which would change the
> symlinks, would be good. I need to think about it some more.

Yes, it would be a nice thing to have.  We could review existing
solutions.  I know that some Linux distributions already have
implementations for such switches.  Perhaps it's a good idea to look
at them?

Maciej